BEIJING, Aug 2: North Korea said on Tuesday no progress had been made in fiery talks over the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons programmes after more than a week of negotiations, but committed to another day of meetings. The Stalinist state and the United States remain at loggerheads despite the talks running into an eighth day, with the American side blaming the North for the failure to find a solution to the three-year standoff.

Chief US negotiator Christopher Hill said the six parties would on Wednesday look at the latest Chinese draft of a joint statement aimed at establishing a framework to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

“Whether we’ll have a draft everybody agrees on or whether it is decided that there should be a recess sometime, we don’t know yet,” Hill told reporters at the end of the eighth day of talks.

“The Chinese side is really trying to bring this negotiation to a conclusion of some kind in the next few days,” he said, adding that the participating nations were sending the latest draft to their governments for scrutiny.

The five other nations — the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia — would offer their final comments on it on Wednesday, Hill said.—AFP